Flipping a science course, by having students watch videos first to learn basic concepts and step-by-step procedures for doing lab work, can improve the outcomes. That's the finding of an experiment run at DeSales and Clemson Universities in a research project sponsored by a journal publisher that produces such videos. The project was undertaken by TERC, a nonprofit STEM education research and development organization, on behalf of the Journal of Visualized Experiments.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Manhattan College and California Polytechnic State University have won $556,000 from the National Science Foundation to study the ethics of self-driving cars. Dubbed "Ethical Algorithms in Autonomous Vehicles," the project has two main goals: The development of ethical algorithms for use in self-driving cars; and development of a model of the projected health outcomes resulting from the implementation of their algorithms.

Wake Forest University's School of Business is expanding its Master of Science in Business Analytics program through a partnership with online higher education provider Noodle Partners. The new offering will cater to working professionals who want to hone their big data skills in an online format.

Three assessment management vendors have joined forces to launch Watermark, a new provider of assessment software for higher education. The new company, which comes out of the mergers of Taskstream, Tk20 and LiveText last year, offers products for assessment and accreditation planning, learning outcomes measurement, and e-portfolios and student assessment.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab North America has launched the Education, Technology and Opportunity Innovation Competition in an effort to identify effective technology use and provide examples of how learning can be improved through innovation. The competition asks school networks, education agencies, nonprofits and post-secondary institutions to evaluate their education programs based on technology, especially those focused on disadvantaged students.

In a randomized trial this past summer, community college students in STEM fields who received personalized text message "nudges" to keep them on track stayed in school at a rate 10 percentage points higher than those who did not receive nudges. The study, a joint effort by Jobs for the Future and Persistence Plus, followed about 2,000 students at four U.S. community colleges to gauge the impact of text message communications on college completion and student success.

There's never been a better time to seek funding for education technology. According to Metaari, 2017 turned out to generate the most investment dollars ever in the learning technology industry. It topped $9.5 billion globally, up from $7.3 billion in 2016, which was itself 46 percent higher than the $6.5 billion in investments made in 2015. The latest year's funding went to 813 ed tech companies, the highest ever recorded, according to the learning market research company.

In a recent study, 10 percent of simulated phishing e-mails sent to users in education institutions were successful, triggering the recipient to click on a fraudulent link. That's according to the 2018 State of the Phish report from Wombat Security Technologies, in which researchers measured the average click rates on phishing tests across various industries. Education had an average click rate of 10 percent; the industries that performed worst in the tests were telecommunications and retail, with 15 percent and 14 percent average click rates, respectively.